black-letter ballad, in the Pepys collection, makes Jane die of hunger after doing penance, and a man to be hanged for relieving her; both which are fictions, and led to the popular error of Jane's being starved in a ditch, and thus giving the name to Shoreditch:

I could not get one bit of bread,
Whereby my hunger might be fed ;
Nor drink, but such as channels yield,
Or stinking ditches in the field.
Thus, weary of my life at lengthe,
I yielded up my vital strength
Within a ditch of loathsome scent,
Where carrion dogs did much frequent:
The which now, since my dying daye,
Is Shoreditch call'd, as writers saye.

But this ballad is not older than the middle of the 17th century; and no mention is made of Jane so dying in a ballad by Th. Churchyard, dated 1587. Dr. Percy erroneously refers Shoreditch to "its being a common sewer, vulgarly shore, or drain." It is also called Sorditch; which is the most correct, according to the above explanation. Stow declares this ancient manor, parish, and street, of London, to have been called Soersditch more than 400 years before his time; and Weever states it to have been named from Sir John de Soerdich, lord of the manor temp. Edward III., and who was with that king in his wars with France. Two miles north-east of Uxbridge is Ickenham Hall, the seat of the Soerdich family, who have been owners of the manor from the time of Edward III.

STORY OF A KING'S HEAD.

Srow relates the following strange discovery of the disposal of the head of James IV. of Scotland, in the chronicler's description of the Church of St. Michael, Wood Street.

"There is," he says, "but without any outward monument, the head of James IV., King of Scotts, of that name, slain at Flodden Field, and buried here by this occasion. After the battle, the body of the said king being found, was closed in lead, and conveyed from thence to London, and so to the monastery of Sheen, in Surrey, where it remained for a time, in what order I am not certain. But since the dissolution of that house in the reign of Edward VI., Henry Gray, Duke of Suffolk, being lodged and keeping house there, I have been shewed the same body so lapped in lead close to the head and body, was thrown into a waste room amongst the old timber, lead and other rubble. Since the which time, workmen there (for their foolish pleasure) hewed off his head. And Launcelot Young, master-glazier to Queen Elizabeth, feeling a sweet savour to come from thence, and seeing the same dried from moisture, and yet the form remaining with the hair of the head and beard red, brought it to London to his house in Wood Street, where (for a time) he kept it for the sweetness; but in the end caused the sexton of that church to bury it amongst other bones taken out of the charnel, &c."

The above statement is contradicted by the Scottish historians; but Weever is positive that Sheen was the place of James's burial. There is also another story of a body with a chain round the waist, said to have

been found in the moat of Home Castle, and by the tradition identified with that of James IV. of Scotland; but this has been disproved by Sir Walter Scott.

A Correspondent of the Athenæum, 1852, writes: "The curious French Gazette records that the king was killed within a lance's length of the Earl of Surrey; and Lord Dacre, in his letter to the Lords of the Council (orig. Cal. B. ii. 115), writes that he found the body of James, and, after informing Surrey by writing, brought it to Berwick; whilst a tablet, which was fixed to the tomb of this very Earl of Surrey, afterwards second Duke of Norfolk, in Thetford Abbey, and recounted the principal occurrences in his eventful life (see Weever and a MS. copy of the time of Eliz. Jul. c. vii.), stated,' And this done [the battle], the said Earl went to Berwick to establish all things well and in good order, and sent for the dead body of the King of Scotts to Berwick; and when the ordnance of the King of Scotts was brought out of the field and put in good suretie, and all other things in good order, then the said Earl took his journey towards York, and there abode during the King's pleasure, and carried with him the dead body of the aforesaid King of Scotts, and lay there until such time as the King's highness came from beyond the sea after his winning of Turwin and Torney. And then his highness sent for him to meet him at Richmond, and so he did, and delivered unto his highness the dead body of the King of Scotts, which dead body was delivered into the Charter-house there, and thereto abyde during the King's pleasure.' The person of the King of Scotland must have been as well known to Lord Dacre from his recent conferences with him,

as to the Earl of Surrey from his residence at the Court of Scotland on the occasion of his conducting the Princess, afterwards Queen Margaret, thither; and the monastery of Sheen (Shene) alluded to by Stow, having been occupied by monks of the Carthusian order, will be easily recognised as the Charter House of Richmond spoken of in the epitaph of the Duke of Norfolk."

QUEEN ELIZABETH BY TORCHLIGHT.

BISHOP GOODMAN, in his Memoirs of the Court of King James I. (the manuscript of which is preserved in the Bodleian Library), has left this curious account of Queen Elizabeth's popularity, as well as a portraiture of the Virgin Queen:

"In the year 1588, I did then live at the upper end of the Strand, near St. Clement's Church, when suddenly there came a report unto us (it was in December, much about five of the clock at night, very dark), that the Queen was gone to council, and if you will see the Queen, you must come quickly. Then we all ran; when the court gates were set open, and no man did

Then we came where there

hinder us from coming in. was a far greater company than was usual at Lenten Sermons; and when we had stayed there an hour, and that the yard was full, there being a number of torches, the Queen came out in great state. Then we cried, 'God save your Majesty! God save your Majesty !' Then the Queen turned unto us, and said, God bless you all, my good people!' Then we cried again,' God save your Majesty! God save your Majesty!' Then the Queen said again unto us, 'You may well have a

greater prince, but you shall never have a more loving prince!' and so, looking one upon another for a while, the Queen departed. This wrought such an impression upon us, for shows and pageants are ever best seen by torchlight, that all the way long, we did nothing but talk what an admirable queen she was, and how we would adventure our lives to do her service. Now this was in a year when she had most enemies, and how easily might they then have gotten into the crowd and multitude to have done her a mischief!

"Take her then in her yearly journeys at her coming to London, where you must understand that she did desire to be seen and to be magnified; but in her old age she had not only wrinkles, but she had a goggle throat, a great gullet hanging out, as her grandfather Henry VII. is ever painted withal. [Walpole, in his Royal and Noble Authors, has given the impression of one of Elizabeth's coins, which was struck apparently a few years before her death. It represents her very old and ugly.] And truly, there was then a report that the ladies had gotten false looking-glasses, that the Queen might not see her own wrinkles; for having been exceeding beautiful and fair in her youth, such beauties are very aptest for wrinkles in old age.

"So then the Queen's constant custom was, a little before her coronation-day, to come from Richmond to London, and dine with the Lord Admiral (the Earl of Effingham) at Chelsea; and to set out from Chelsea at dark night, where the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen were to meet her, and here, all the way long, from Chelsea to Whitehall, was full of people to see her, and truly any man might very easily have come to her coach. Now, if she thought that she had been in